Framework question for small-medium application

At this point, I am collecting the requirement for a projects for licensing application. Based on my initial findings it doesn't seem like a very complex system. There are lots of data (from legacy systems) but not too much complex application. We are talking about 25-35 database tables and low level complex application. This application will be used internal to our company as well.

In this situation, we are debating over to go with Struts or Spring framework. I don't have direct experience with the struts or spring framework. Technical members are not able to come up with the one single suggestion so I am reaching out to you guys for a general advice. (Sorry for the open ended question let me know if you need any other information for providing your suggestion)

This question gets asked several times a week. Looking at the Frameworks forum there's at least 5 similar topics on the first page. My answer to your query can be summed up in this post. I'll move this post to the Frameworks forum, which is more suited to debating between different frameworks.

I agree with you point that this question is being asked many many times in past. I also tried to search the forum as well. It is really confusing for newbie too.

Basically this are my questions in nutshell

Which framework is suggested for a low level complexity application?

Which framework is easy to use and learn?

One FYI, Yes I just reviewed Matt Raible's presentation and before I was under the impression that Struts 2 is very easy and basic framework but I didn't get that information from his presentation, Any thought?

I didn't do any development since 2006 (used JSP, Servlet, JSTL and JDBC) but now forced to enter back into development so please help me out if you can.

They're both pretty easy to learn, IMO (and S2 has good Spring integration--it's not an either-or proposition). You're going to find people on both sides--it might be best to investigate each framework yourself and see what works for *you*.

Raj Nj
Greenhorn

Joined: Dec 08, 2009
Posts: 5

posted Dec 09, 2009 09:05:37

0

David,

Thank you for your response.

I almost spend last 4 hours searching for my answer on the Google and here on the forum.

Very very difficult choices are there......

As you suggested, the best course of action i think is to find sample example project for both First Struts 2 and then in Spring to see how they feel like.

I will collect all the requirements in detail and once I have my requirements in place; I will comeback to this forum for expert suggestion about the framework.

It seems like I am in very early stage to think about framework.... without having defined set of requirements.

Raj Nj wrote: I agree with you point that this question is being asked many many times in past. I also tried to search the forum as well. It is really confusing for newbie too.

Not a problem. Just trying to keep the forum clean.

Raj Nj wrote: I was under the impression that Struts 2 is very easy and basic framework but I didn't get that information from his presentation, Any thought?

I'd consider a "basic" framework something like Frontman, which is a Front Controller implementation. Struts 2 has many bells and whistles like a tag library that sets it apart from such a "basic" framework. In my experience, Struts 2 took a couple of days to learn. It has paid off because it is much faster to develop with compared to Struts 1.